Don’t get me wrong; I have all this in perspective. I know full well that there are far worse things than having your car break down but when it happens in driving rain on the roundabout at the junction of the A259 and the A21, you might be forgiven for thinking that God might have been distracted by (I don’t know) some piddling natural disaster or other and has left you to your fate. And when you phone your breakdown company and discover that your cover (for which you have been paying for about twenty-five years without a break) has lapsed the week before and that if you want to be towed out of that maw of death it’s going to cost you £120 before they’ll even take a look at the engine, you might conclude that Beelzebub may well have had a hand in the action somewhere.Then, when you sit in the absolute PISSING rain for two hours awaiting the privilege of handing over a hundred and twenty smackers to some licensed bandit with a tow-rope and having throughout, nothing to listen to on the radio but the right-wing nut-case historian Niall Ferguson giving the benefit of his years of study, which have led him to the conclusion that every other academic in the world is utterly wrong about practically everything and that he alone can save our society from the terror of the State; and when you finally get the bloody car home and discover that the cam belt has gone, taking several rods and valves with it and the car has gone to the great garage in the sky, and that sound you hear is yourself laughing hysterically, well the idea that you are utterly alone in a Godless universe begins to insinuate itself into your fried consciousness. All this and more has happened to me in the last week: but am I disheartened? Well, yes as a matter of fact, I am. Still, I can always sit down at my computer and undergo the great catharsis that is writing. What could be better?Well, don’t get me started...